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Chapter Ten

They had looked over the side of the canyon for quite some time before they trooped back to the car. Bree had put quarters into one of the old-fashioned tourist binocular machines and peered all over the cayon's wide mouth at the river below. Nick spent the time staring out, too, with his mind somewhere entirely else, half expecting to hear the voice of God boom out from the atmosphere.

God, in Nick's head anyway, sounded a lot like Brian. It was probably because Nick had never really thought about God or Heaven or any of that stuff before Brian had come into his life. And when Brian died - that was the first time that Nick had ever really thought deeply about things like death and the afterlife, about what happens after a person dies. So God's voice just sounded a lot like Brian's. Not because he thought Brian was God, but just because it was the first voice he'd ever heard talk about God freely. God probably didn't have a Kentucky accent, Nick was aware of that much. Granted, that was about the extent of his religious knowledge, but he was pretty sure it was an accurate notion.

A lonely bird circled through the canyon and Nick watched it's wings on the thermals that streamed through the crack in the earth's crust, his heart seizing up for a moment as he stared at it. The bird's slightest movement sent him soaring or diving, and he grazed the wind the way a surfer's board does the ocean's waves. It probably wasn't even an eagle, he told himself, but he still felt his eyes watering up. He looked away as the bird disappeared into the clouds and glaring sun, swiping his face with the back of his fist and turning to find Bree beside him, also watching the bird.

"Was that an eagle?" she wondered.

Nick shrugged, trying not to sound choked up, "Nawh, I think it was a hawk..." If Bree noticed the emotion that thickened his voice, she was polite enough not to say so, and Nick hoped it was just that he'd done well enough masking the tone that she hadn't the faintest clue that he'd been on the verge of tears.

As they walked back to the car, the sun was sneaking down past the edge of the canyon and they sat in the car, watching it disappear and paint the winter sky a variety of violet and magenta shades. Bree sighed. Nick glanced at her, his composure completely regained by this point, and muttered, "What'sa matter?"

"I wish I could've been here," she said.

Nick knew without asking that she meant then, when he'd been here last. He rubbed his palms against his knees as the sun shot its last rays into the night sky overhead. "We camped that time," he said, "We took the burros down and camped at the bottom."

Bree smiled, "That must've been cool."

"Yeah, it's pretty awesome. There's like a ton of red-tape you gotta cross before you can do that or I'd suggest we do it, too, so you can give it a whirl..." he laughed, "Maybe some other time." But even as he said it he knew they'd probably never do it. First of all, it'd taken throwing around the fact that he was a Backstreet Boy and his friend was dying to get the okay the first time. Now, it'd been so long since being a Backstreet Boy had mattered and honestly the dying friend thing had held a lot of clout then so there was probably no chance in hell that he'd get the okay again.

Besides that, it'd been special between him, Amanda, and Brian, and he wasn't honestly sure if he was interested in sharing it with anyone else.

And even more besides that, he never had lived down the ridicule from his baby raccoon encounter...

When the sun had completely disappeared behind the horizon line, Nick turned the car on and they glided out of the parking lot. Bree had her feet up on the dashboard, staring out the window at the thousands of stars that had begun poking out all over the inky-black sky. Nick drove to the nearest gas station, got out of the car and started pumping gas. He knocked on the window, told Bree that he'd be right back, and disappeared into the store.

Bree used the opportunity to pull out her cell phone. She had three missed calls - all of them were her mother. She sighed and rolled her eyes. She had no patience for her mother at the moment. Her mom knew they were on a road trip, so she'd just tell her later that the reception was out. She closed the missed call notification page and clicked on a new text from Baylee.

Where r u?

Bree clicked reply and tapped out, With uncle Nick. Where r u?

The stars seemed almost blue, they were so bright. A couple of them she could see a chemical rainbow, like a bubble, in their light. They were beautiful -- cosmic. She hugged her knees to her chest. As she stared out, she realized that sixteen years ago her father might've laid on the ground at the bottom of the canyon, looking up at the very same stars that she was seeing now. She felt a tugging sensation somewhere beneath her heart, somewhere in her gut; she felt closer to Brian here, in a place where he'd been happy, where he'd been making memoies. She felt like at any moment he could just walk up and knock on the window, offer her a hot chocolate and a hug and their lives would stretch on into forver, a happily ever after.

The phone vibed again, making Bree jump. She felt ridiculous as soon as she'd realized it was her phone. Her heart was slamming pointlessly in her chest. For a brief moment she'd thought she'd seen him - Brian - leaning up to the window...

She clicked on Baylee's message. Mom's pissed.

Bree stared at the screen for a long moment. Her mother never got mad at Baylee. Her eyebrows creased together and she was about to ask what happened when the car door opened and Nick climbed back into the car. "Sorry," he muttered.

Deciding whatever was wrong with Leighanne now was less important than spending time with Nick, Bree slid her phone into her pocket, promising herself she'd text Baylee again later, when they stopped to sleep. She looked at Nick, "No problem. What were you doing?"

"I had to make a phone call," he answered.

"To who?"

Nick handed her a cup of hot chocolate he'd bought her in the store. "Here," he answered. Bree stared at the cup. It was as though he'd known what she'd been thinking. He raised an eyebrow as she stared, slack-jawed at the styrofoam cup. "Whatsa matter?" he asked, "Don't you like cocoa?"

"Yeah," she stammered, taking the cup, "Of course I do, I just - I was just thinking about hot chocolate, that's all."

Nick slipped a second styrofoam cup into the cupholder and turned the key in the ignition. When the light was on, he stared down at a map on his phone for a few moments, mumbling directions to himself. Bree sipped the cocoa and was just finishing the cup as Nick finally pulled out of the gas station and they started heading down the road again through the dark.

They rode in silence for what felt like quite a long time before Nick took a left and the car merged onto a freeway with signs saying they were headed north. Bree put the empty styrofoam cup into the empty side of the holder. She studied Nick's silhouette, backlit by the passing street lamps. She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment. "Is it hard?" she asked, "Coming back here without him? Seeing the places he was and stuff?"

Nick shrugged. "It's weird, I guess."

"Do you think I'd be here if it wasn't for him dying?" she asked.

Nick shrugged again.

It was something that had always bothered Bree, something she'd dreamed once in a nightmare that she'd never told anyone. She'd dreamt Brian had survived but she had never existed. She imagined now that it was probably because she didn't know how to envision herself with a father - she'd never had one - but sometimes it bothered her, somewhere deep in her gut, that she'd somehow been the reason that he'd died. Like he'd been offered some sort of barbaric heavenly exchange deal. For a time she'd even imagined it'd been some sort of strange form of reincarnation - obviously not that she was her father but that she'd somehow gained a portion of his spirit.

She'd never told anyone she felt like that though. They'd think she was crazy. Or else mistaken her for one of those Star Trek people that really believe they can speak that language and stuff.

It wasn't like that. It was on an emotional level. Really.

She supposed to was her way of dealing with the haunted, incompleted feeling that she'd carried around all her life.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" she asked Nick at last.

Nick shook his head firmly, "I used to."

"What made you change your mind?" Bree asked.

Nick's voice was low. "If people could come back, Brian would be here," he replied.

Bree couldn't help but feel that in a way maybe he was.